February 1, 2016 - "FTTR - Fiber To The Room" solutions are being used in the majority of new hotel installations around the world. A standard for this type of project has even been developed within the FTTR working group of the Hotel Technology Next Generation or HTNG.
However, until now, most of the references consisted of medium and large hotels, where the advantages of this type of solution are most evident.
Now we present, in this news, the case study of a boutique hotel in North Carolina (Durham Hotel) that has also implemented this type of FTTR solutions to provide its customers with free high speed internet access and in this case with GPON (Gigabit Passive Optical Network) equipment from Zhone Technologies.
The owners of the hotel wanted to make it a dynamic destination for all types of travellers in the area and one of the keys to their business model was that they could provide very advanced communications services to their customers.
The Durcan Hotel has been built by remodelling a bank building in the city centre. When the hotel management team assessed the needs, they realised that they needed a solution that would fit into the limited space available within the building. The network would also have to support the hotel's management system and security.
To achieve this, the hotel decided to use GPON technology to provide WiFi services to its guests.
In the attached article, the hotel manager explains how Zhone's GPON FiberLan solution allowed them to save a lot of space in the building and achieve the high-speed performance they wanted.
With the space savings from eliminating the technical rooms on the floors, the hotel was able to add guest service rooms on each floor, facilitating the best possible customer service.
On the other hand, the implemented GPON communications network is not only robust and easily expandable, but also supports the Hotel's voice, video, WiFi and security services.
Finally, the Hotel chose a strategy of IP cloud services (including ToIP) to reduce operating costs, which allows the Hotel to offer free internet services to its customers with a similar (or better) experience to what they have at home and/or in their businesses.
You can see the case study of this project in this link.
This example shows how FTTR solutions can also reduce costs and improve service in smaller hotels.
More information on FTTR solutions for Hotels can be found in this blog post.